


and then it tries to find a home

by piggy09



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-08 23:21:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17395646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: In the prison cell the wizard's eyes had been desperate and hungry and they had gone on forever – and that’s why Nott helped him out, that’s why she ran with him. In part because of the magic. But in part because of the gaping gulping gasping need that she saw in him, the one that felt like her need. Not a goblin’s need. Her need.





	and then it tries to find a home

**Author's Note:**

> [warnings: descriptions of gore and violence and cannibalism, animal death]

Nott and the goblin and the wizard whose name is Caleb are all walking through the city, and the city is full of people, and the people are not goblins, and Nott is a goblin, and Nott is with the wizard. The wizard’s name is Caleb. He moves the same way Nott moves, when surrounded by this many people (who are not goblins): he shrinks in on himself, he clenches his fingers. The cat on his shoulders huddles closer; it purrs comfortingly.

“We need food,” says the wizard, whose name is Caleb. In the prison cell his eyes had been desperate and hungry and they had gone on forever – and that’s why Nott helped him out, that’s why she ran with him. In part because of the magic. But in part because of the gaping gulping gasping need that she saw in him, the one that felt like her need. Not the goblin’s need. Her need.

“Then we’ll steal it,” Nott says.

The wizard (whose name is Caleb) stares at Nott, wide-eyed. Has he ever stolen anything in his life? Maybe he hasn’t. _He’s soft_ , says the goblin. _Eat him_ , and Nott pulls a breath in through her teeth and lets it out and says: “I’ll steal it. Or I’ll pick pockets. Which—” (of those is what a person would do) “—do you think?”

“I,” says the wizard. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I’ve never – I don’t know. You can do whatever you want and I will help you.”

(Which is a hell of a promise.)

“Alright,” says Nott. She touches her tongue against her (sharp) (goblin) teeth. The goblin wants to eat, so feeding it would be smart – but stealing money would buy more food, and also perhaps a place to spend the night that isn’t the ground. People, she’s heard, sleep in beds. She wants to try it.

“Come on,” she says, and takes the wizard (Caleb)’s hand. The goblin scrabbles up the inside of her throat and spouts a load of goblin gibberish, _break his hand take his hand pull him to the ground stab him cut him open cut them all open humans are weak and stupid eat kill beat steal—_ and she ignores it, and it’s fine. She holds his hand. It’s hot, and large, and very sweaty. His fingers jolt between her fingers as she grabs them. She hasn’t ever really held a human’s hand before. Actually, she’s never held anyone’s hand, and she drags the wizard into an alley.

“Stay here,” she says. “Be _careful_.”

“ _Ja_ ,” says the wizard. His eyes are glassy. He really doesn’t like people at all, does he. That’s fine. Nott doesn’t need him to like people; she only needs him to like her.

 _Take him_ , says the goblin. _Steal him._

 _Not like that,_ Nott says, and she ducks back into the crowd.

The crowd is a big maw full of sharp teeth, and the goblin is banging at the inside of her mind with two sharp small fists. _Stab her in the kidneys_ and then _shoot that child with a crossbow bolt_ and then _claw out their eyes_ and then _rob her purse_ and Nott does, quickly, plucks the coin purse like a ripe fruit and dives back into the crowd. There: another one. And another. The pockets in her rags are full of jingling, and the goblin curls up sulkily and snarls itself to sleep.

So she breathes.

Underneath a fruit stand, she counts out her gains: sixteen copper, twelve silver, three lovely precious gold. Nott puts a piece of gold against her lower lip; it’s cold, and it sends a shiver of _good_ all the way down her spine. The goblin purrs in its sleep and rolls over. She pockets what she’s got in one sturdy-looking coin purse and leaves the rest under the fruit stall.

On her way out, she snags an apple and bites into it. Sweet, tart, sharp. The apple-taste explodes in her mouth and is unfamiliar. When Nott was a goblin, she mostly ate meat. The meat was mostly alive. Sometimes it wasn’t. Once, it was a human baby, but only part of it. She bites into the apple and eats all of it and then the core of the apple and all of the seeds and then she arrives in the alley again and there’s the wizard, whose name is Caleb.

He’s sitting on the ground with his head in his hands, and the cat is sitting on his shoulder. Nott has eaten a few cats. This one is magic; if she eats the cat, it doesn’t mean the cat will stop. She shouldn’t find that soothing. She does. “Hello,” she says, and the wizard jolts.

“Oh,” he says. “You came back.” The last sentence sounds soft and vaguely hopeful, and Nott feels terrible about everything that she’s done and everything that she is.

“Of course I came back,” she says. “We’re in this together, remember?”

The wizard’s mouth (Caleb’s mouth) crumples up into a smile, and then his eyes go distant and the smile goes away. It’s nice, actually – making him smile – and there’s a terrible rolling second of empathy where Nott imagines being in a jail cell and what Caleb could have done to be in the jail cell and why he was alone in there—

“I’m starving,” she says. “I bet you’re starving. Let’s get something to eat.”

“Alright,” says the wizard (Caleb). He stands up, slowly. The cat jumps to the ground; it curls around his feet and then looks at Nott and meows plaintively.

“He likes you,” the wizard Caleb says. “You could carry him. If you want. I saw – out there, I saw back there that you don’t like crowds. It was very brave of you to go back into one, for m—for food, but you don’t have to go alone. This time. If that’s not what you want.”

The cat wiggles its tail and then makes a jump for Nott’s shoulders; Nott lets it. It curls around her neck and begins to purr. It’s very soft, and very warm.

“You probably shouldn’t let me have it,” she says. “I’m hungry, and he’s breakfast-sized.”

The cat butts its head against her chin and purrs, rumbling. It licks her face. Nott reaches out one (goblin) hand and pets its head, gently.

The Calebwizard smiles again. “I told you he likes you.”

Nott ate a rat five weeks ago by barreling after it on all fours and then picking it up and ripping out its spine with her teeth. It screamed when it died. Its blood splattered all over her face, sour and hot. Its intestines sagged out of its body in sallow grey loops. If she doesn’t think about the rat, she doesn’t have to think about how eating it felt better than petting this cat feels. She doesn’t have to think about that one bit.

“I like him too,” she says. “You know what I also like? Food.”

Out of an instinct that’s probably a person’s instinct, she holds out her hand again. Caleb takes it. They walk back into the crowd.

“I was thinking,” Nott says, over the rumblepurring and the buzzhum of the crowd. “Maybe we could find a place to sleep that isn’t the ground.”

“Oh,” says the wizard, Caleb. “You mean like an inn. Yes, I – we should probably. Do that. At some point.”

“An inn,” Nott says, saying the last syllable carefully. She doesn’t even have to touch her tongue to her teeth to do it. “Yes. Do you think there’s one near here?”

“We could ask.”

“You could,” Nott says. “People don’t usually tell me things, when I ask them.”

“Why?” says the wizard. His name is Caleb. Nott doesn’t answer his question, and instead turns her head to the side so she can bury part of her face in the fur of the cat. It smells like sunlight and dust. It would be nice if she was a cat. People would coo at her, and want her pressed close; she would soothe them.

“Never mind,” she says. “I’ll ask.” She drags Caleb up to a stall that’s selling something that smells like sugar and animal fat.

She pulls coins out of the stolen purse. “Two,” she says. She tries not to look in the eyes of the (human) woman at the stall. She waits out the moment of silence where the (human) woman looks at Nott’s skin and teeth and eyes and claws and then she says: “Please.”

“Alright, dearie,” says the stall-runner. “That’ll be six copper.” Nott lets her eyes flick back to the human face of the woman running the stall. She is soft all over, and her skin is brown. Nott wishes she had that skin. _Cut it off_ , says the goblin. _You aren’t supposed to be awake_ , says Nott. _I’m hungry_ , says the goblin. _Eat her eyes, they’d taste like flower petals_.

She counts the coppers: one. two. three. four. five. six. She feels the cat purring. She does her best to forget that a bolt from her crossbow, at this distance, would shatter this woman’s throat like a meat pie crushed in a fist. Mostly, she forgets that.

“Is there an inn?” she says, as she hands the money over and exchanges it for sugar.

 _Burn the city down_ , says the goblin. _Dance in the ashes. Bite out her tongue. Eat every piece of food in this stall, I’m hungry, we’re starving—_

“Ah, yes,” says the human running the stall – the one with eyes like uneaten flowers and skin that Nott won’t touch. “The Dancing Deer, just down that way.” She points with soft fingers. The goblin sucks in a breath and Nott says _don’t, please, I’m begging_. The goblin chatters to itself softly, clacks its teeth, whispers: _just this one time. Just this once. Then I’ll be quiet but this once, I need it._

The cat kneads its claws into Nott’s shoulder. _Kill the cat_ , the goblin says. _Pick it up by the tail and dash it against the ground until it breaks. Then it won’t be able to hurt you anymore. Then nothing will be able to hurt you anymore._

The hands of the wizard named Caleb reach past Nott and take the two pastries. “ _Danke_ ,” he says. He hands one to Nott. She sinks her teeth into it and the goblin shudders and lowers its voice from murder to murmur. The inside of the pastry is filled with something warm and sweet and it bursts in Nott’s mouth like a jugular, exactly like a jugular. She walks behind the wizard and remembers again that his name is Caleb.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve slept in a bed,” he says.

“I’ve never slept in one,” Nott says, and it slips out and clatters to the ground. She’s spent that, she’s given it up.

“Really?” says the (human) wizard (Caleb). “Well, they are very soft, you’ll like it.”

 _I like things that are soft_ , Nott says.

 _I like things that are soft_ , says the goblin, and smiles in a way that makes Nott’s teeth hurt. She hates her teeth. She bites into the pastry, swallows it, continues to be starving.

Nott and the wizard Caleb walk into a building with a painting outside of it of a deer. It doesn’t look like a deer, really, which is to say it doesn’t look terrified and also it isn’t bleeding. Thinking about it, Nott isn’t sure her experiences with deer are the right ones to have.

Inside it’s even louder, and she and Caleb press closer to each other out of some muted understanding. The cat leans against Caleb’s arm but doesn’t leave Nott’s shoulder. They make it through the bar, somehow, and the goblin tells Nott all about which things in the room she can break and which she can kill and which she can steal. What can she eat? All of it. She’s so tired, she eats none of it.

She puts her back to the bar and listens to the wizard, Caleb, buy them a place to spend the night. She passes him the coins when he asks for them. When the hot sick pulse of the crowd becomes too much, she turns back around to the bar and says: “And food.”

“Y’want some mutton?” says the dwarf behind the counter.

Nott has vague ideas of what mutton is. “Yes,” she says.

“A’right,” says the dwarf. “And ye’ll be wantin’ some ale to go with it.”

Ale? Ail? Ael? _Is that what a person would do_ , Nott asks, urgently, only she doesn’t have time to ask that. “Yes,” she says. She looks at the dwarf’s beard, and the way that it covers their face right up, and the goblin tells her all the things Nott could do to take that beard and make it hers. “So much ale,” Nott tells the dwarf.

The wizard named Caleb nods in agreement, asks for mutton and ale. They find a table at the floor of the inn, one tucked away in the corner. Their backs are to the wall. It’s nice – it’s almost quiet – it’s not quiet enough. Nott is tired of having a goblin inside of her. She is tired of being in the body of a goblin. She is so hungry.

 _You could eat the wizard_ , says the goblin.

 _No_ , says Nott. She folds her arms on the table and rests her head on them.

 _Break his bones between your teeth_ , says the goblin.

 _No_.

_Torture him with hot pieces of iron._

_No._

_He’s weak. He’s a weak little baby, he’ll never survive out here. You could survive if you listened to me._

Nott raises her head again and looks at the wizard. He is adjusting something under his raggedy coat. She doesn’t want to think about the fact that she likes him – it will all be worse if she likes him. It never works out when she likes people that she can’t keep.

When the wizard (his name is Caleb) (she can’t manage to forget that) (she refuses to forget that) sees her looking at him, he ducks his head a little bit. His eyes are so very bright blue.

“I don’t know why you’re helping me,” he says. “You – you are smart, and quick, and you could make it anywhere with your wits and your thieving skills. Why are – you could leave me behind. It would probably be smart of you to do.”

He holds his hands towards himself, wrists bent, and begins to flick his wrists up and down, up and down. His hands move like dying birds. The cat crawls across the table and shoves its spine under the wizard’s hands, demandingly; he gives in and pets it.

“I like you,” Nott says. It’s too uncomfortable a truth to give up but she gives it.

“I think you can do great things,” Nott says, which is an easier truth to bear.

 _You could do great things if you had his bones in your belly_ , says the goblin. _Then you’d have magic, and also you’d stop being hungry._

“I don’t think that’s true anymore,” the wizard says, and then their food comes. It turns out ale is some sort of drink in a cup that smells vaguely like the fermented things they had under the ground – the ones that made Nott’s head go soft sometimes. Never soft enough to be a person, but soft. This cup smells dizzy-strong. Nott picks it up with both hands and swallows it.

It tastes good.

She drinks more of it, and eats the meat on the plate, and eats some of Caleb-the-wizard’s food when he doesn’t eat very much of it, and they get more ale, and they drink more ale, and the goblin inside of Nott’s brain turns into a ginger cat and she pets it and it purrs at her. It purrs at her. It’s so soft and it purrs at her. This must be what people feel like all the time, soft and safe and touchable.

 _Imagine_ , she says, _imagine if we could be this way all the time_. The bar around her blurs into cat’s fur. The cat in her brain says nothing; it just purrs at her, sweetly. Nott’s brain is silent and wrapped up in wool. Imagine, imagine, imagine if she could be this way all the time.

She stops petting the cat in her brain and comes back to the bar, where she is sitting slung over Caleb’s shoulder. He’s warm. She is braiding his hair; she didn’t know she was, but it’s alright, she can do it. She trusts her fingers now that there is no goblin behind them. Soon they won’t be goblin fingers anymore. Soon Caleb will – soon Caleb – and then – anymore. Never again, anymore.

The ale makes an ocean inside of Nott and she drowns in it. She moves her fingers through the storm of Caleb’s ginger hair. “It’s all going to be alright,” she tells him – or maybe she yells it, over the safe screaming sound of the bar. “I’m going to be alright! We’re going to be alright!”

Caleb tilts his head to look at her; his face is pulled wide in a grin and his eyes are fever-bright. “ _Ich habe meine Eltern getötet_ ,” he yells in a joyful clamor. “ _Ich bin ein Mörder!_ _Ich habe meine Eltern getötet!_ ”

“I love you too!” Nott says, and it’s true. She’s drunk and it’s true. She’s drunk and the goblin is gone and it’s true. She finishes the braid in Caleb’s hair and ties it tight and says “I love you,” again, just to see how it doesn’t taste like anything at all.

**Author's Note:**

> I thought that love was in the drugs  
> But the more I took, the more it took away  
> And I could never get enough  
> I thought that love was on the stage  
> You give yourself to strangers  
> You don't have to be afraid  
> And then it tries to find a home with people, oh, and I'm alone  
> Picking it apart and staring at your phone
> 
> We all have a hunger  
> We all have a hunger  
> We all have a hunger  
> We all have a hunger  
> \--"Hunger," Florence + the Machine
> 
> ...the postscript to this fic is that now Caleb and Nott are BEST FRIENDS and also a FAMILY and care about each other very much and are helping each other grow and move forward. I wrote this fic thinking about how when they first met there wasn't a lot of a foundation for love and trust, and I wanted to play around w/that idea. But thankfully we have grown as people, and Caleb and Nott have grown as people, and now Nott kisses Caleb's cheek two times an episode and we're all grateful. I especially am grateful.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed!


End file.
